It is well known in the art to provide measuring devices useful for measuring the height of persons wherein two measuring rods are telescopically arranged and a single column of measuring units is disposed on each side of said rods. In application Ser. No. 743,089 filed Nov. 18, 1976, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,134,213 a height measuring device is described in which the height of persons can be measured in two different types of height measuring units such as English height measuring units, for example, inches, on the one hand, and metric height measuring units, for example, centimeters, on the other. This height measuring device depends upon the use of a step to compensate approximately for the difference between the English units and the metric units. Thus, in a height measuring device of the type described wherein inches appear in one of the vertical columns on the faces of the telescopic units and centimeters appear on the other vertical column in side-to-side relationship with the first column, the English units start at fifty-one inches as the uppermost line on the fixed telescopic column and 130 centimeters on the other vertical fixed column so that a step of 0.18 inch or 0.46 centimeter in vertical height is required between the two measuring levels in order to be able to read the height of a person, either in English units (inches) or the roughly equivalent metric units (centimeters). The rough equivalency between the English units and the metric units is taken care of by the step.
In the past in telescopic units for measuring height, it has always been customary for the lower fixed rod to have a height of fifty-one inches and for the upper telescoping rod to have a height beginning at fifty-one inches and increasing, for example, to seventy-eight inches. Except for the step-type height measuring device previously described, insofar as is known, no one has heretofore devised a height measuring device in which the height of persons can be measured in two different types of height measuring units such as English height measuring units, on the one hand, and metric height measuring units, on the other.